# 🧠 Build Your Own Coding Agent via a Step-by-Step Workshop Welcome! 👋 This workshop will guide you through building your own **AI-powered coding assistant** — starting from a basic chatbot, and adding powerful tools like file reading, shell command execution, and code searching. You don’t need to be an AI expert. Just follow along and build step-by-step! 🌐 **Want a detailed overview?** Check out the blog post: [ghuntley.com/agent](https://ghuntley.com/agent/) --- ## 🎯 What You'll Learn By the end of this workshop, you’ll understand how to: - ✅ Connect to the Anthropic Claude API - ✅ Build a simple AI chatbot - ✅ Add tools like reading files, editing code, and running commands - ✅ Handle tool requests and errors - ✅ Build an agent that gets smarter with each step --- ## 🛠️ What We're Building You’ll build 6 versions of a coding assistant. Each version adds more features: 1. **Basic Chat** — talk to Cursor 2. **File Reader** — read code files 3. **File Explorer** — list files in folders 4. **Command Runner** — run shell commands 5. **File Editor** — modify files 6. **Code Search** — search your codebase with patterns ```mermaid graph LR subgraph "Application Progression" A[chat.go
Basic Chat] --> B[read.go
+ File Reading] B --> C[list_files.go
+ Directory Listing] C --> D[bash_tool.go
+ Shell Commands] D --> E[edit_tool.go
+ File Editing] E --> F[code_search_tool.go
+ Code Search] end subgraph "Tool Capabilities" G[No Tools] --> H[read_file] H --> I[read_file
list_files] I --> J[read_file
list_files
bash] J --> K[read_file
list_files
bash
edit_file] K --> L[read_file
list_files
bash
code_search] end A -.-> G B -.-> H C -.-> I D -.-> J E -.-> K F -.-> L ``` At the end, you’ll end up with a powerful local developer assistant! --- ## 🧱 How It Works (Architect

Agents

how-to-build-a-coding-agent